This book focuses on airport expansion and aviation as a wicked policy problem to illuminate wider theoretical debates and conceptualisations about policy analysis and social and political theory.
It examines the authoritative role of expert commissions in seeking to settle ongoing controversies and discusses the concept of depoliticisation in debates about current and future policy analysis. The authors construct and employ an innovative form of poststructuralist policy analysis, which is used to delineate the rival rhetorical and discursive strategies articulated by the coalitions seeking to shape public policy.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Problematising the Dilemmas of UK Airport Expansion: Puzzles and Research Strategies
1. Depoliticisation, Discourse and Policy Hegemony
2. Governing by Numbers: Fantasies of Forecasting, Predict and Provide, and the Technologies of Government
3. The Anatomy of an Expert Commission: Howard Davies, Rhetorical Reframing and the Performance of Leadership
4. Repoliticising Aviation Policy: Law, Planning and Persistent Activism
5. Extreme Turbulence: Problematisations, Multiple Crises and New Demands
6. ‘What if…?’ A Manifesto for the Green Transformation of Aviation
Conclusion: Staying Grounded
About the Author :
Stephen Griggs is Professor of Public Policy, School of Politics and Public Policy at De Montfort University.
David Howarth is Professor of Politics, Department of Government at the University of Essex.
Review :
"This book provides an invaluable study of the politics of UK airport policy, and forensically illustrates the intractable problems for government in managing such a controversial policy process." Geoff Dudley, University of Oxford
"Griggs and Howarth brilliantly explicate the detrimental consequences of air travel. Starting with local airport expansion, they critically extend the analysis to the destructive implications for society generally, constructively concluding with a manifesto for the greening of aviation." Frank Fischer, Humboldt University of Berlin
